In a forest on the outskirts of this former Chinese capital, 58-year-old real-estate developer Lu Jun and his 30-year-old son, Lu Xun, are set to unveil an ambitious project: a $164-million development with 11 buildings designed by leading international architects.

The centerpiece of the development: the Sifang Art Museum, a 21,528-square-foot exhibition space designed by New York architect Steven Holl that will feature works by Anselm Kiefer,Luc Tuymans and Chinese art collective Made In Company at its first exhibition, which opens Saturday. The complex also includes a hotel, conference center and 20 residential villas.

"Contemporary art and architecture weren't very accepted here in Nanjing," said the elder Mr. Lu, who first came up with the idea for a museum in 2002. "I wanted to change the narrow minds here."

China's wealthy patrons like Mr. Lu's family are underwriting a major cultural boom, spending billions of yuan on grand buildings to showcase impressive collections of art, antiques and other cultural rarities. Their largesse and ambitions echo American industrialists who sponsored the arts in the early years of the 20th century, from the Fricks, who opened their collection in New York in 1935 to the Guggenheims, who opened their New York museum in 1959.

For Architecture's Sake

Private museums continue to open and thrive in the West today: Eli Broad's $395 million downtown Los Angeles museum is slated to open next year, while French billionaire François Pinault shows his vast art collection at two venues in Venice that opened in recent years.

In China, privately built museums are new and are starting to spread. They are generally built to exhibit private collections and are open to the public. They don't receive much support from the government and generally don't have foundations or charitable status. They don't accept donations, and the government doesn't give grants, subsidies or tax breaks.

That hasn't dissuaded a spate of wealthy Chinese, who say they feel compelled to leave a cultural legacy, from opening private museums over the past several years. In Shanghai, Budi Tek, an Indonesian agricultural magnate, is set to open his Yuz museum in an abandoned aircraft hangar in December. The sprawling nearly 97,000-square-foot building will feature his collection of China's top contemporary paintings and installations. "A museum needs an identity," he said recently at his office in Shanghai. "This museum will reveal Budi's identity." Also next year, industrialist Liu Wenjin is set to open the Yellow River Arts Center in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia province, at an estimated cost of $279 million.

Last year, collector Wang Wei and her investment tycoon husband, Liu Yiqian, poured about $50 million into an abandoned Shanghai shopping mall to construct the Long Museum. The museum houses their vast art collection, worth an estimated $150 million, according to art-industry reports, ranging from Chinese antique porcelain to contemporary paintings by Yayoi Kusama. Unlike many galleries in the West, Ms. Wei's Long Museum has no board of directors or foundation and is supported solely out of her family's fortune. She laments the little support from government but says it is important to develop the nation's cultural heritage. "If the art is only in my home, the power of the art is limited to me," Ms. Wang said in an interview earlier this year.

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A Nanjing family are about to unveil the $164 million Sifang Art Museum and architecture park, a design fantasyland featuring buildings by world-renowned architects including David Adjaye, Steven Holl and Wang Shu. To explore the park go to WSJ.com/sifang

A former economics professor at Nanjing Normal University and local politician in Nanjing, Lu Jun left political life in 1989 to go into business. Over the next decade, he started many companies, though he was most successful with real-estate development. More recently, he started a financing company with registered capital of 250 million yuan ($41.1 million) that provides small-business loans, according to a government registry. The family won't disclose the value of their businesses.

When he was first offered the chance to buy the 115-acre parcel of empty forest outside Nanjing in 2002, Lu Jun originally envisioned building a luxury-villa development. But a meeting with a local Nanjing architect persuaded him to attempt something much bigger and more ambitious.

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Lu Jun and his son Lu Xun spent $164 million to develop 11 buildings by leading architects.
Thomas DiFonzo/The Wall Street Journal

Over the next year, Lu Jun hired Liu Jiakun, a Chinese architect, and Arato Isozaki, a Japanese architect, to curate the project. In all, the two chose 22 architects to design the buildings. A comprehensive list was drafted, including two Pritzker Prize-winners (Wang Shu and Japanese firm Sanaa), artist Ai Weiwei and British architect David Adjaye, and they all agreed to participate.

"We wanted to preach design and good art," said Lu Xun, Lu Jun's son, who left postgraduate studies in England in 2008 to move back to Nanjing and work on the project. "We went overboard."

It took 10 years to build. Construction was fitful: Local contractors struggled with the complex designs, money was short at times and materials were difficult to source. In all, 11 buildings are mostly finished, and another three are expected to be completed in the next year.

The project has taken so long that many doubted it would ever be completed. "I've forgotten about it," said Ai Weiwei, the renowned artist, in an interview from his Beijing studio. The artist designed a concrete-based hilltop residential villa dubbed "Six Rooms" with a view of the entire valley that will be available to rent. "I didn't know if it would ever be completed. It's been so long."

The museum, located at the top of a slope, is a modernist translucent white box, perched more than 30 feet above ground, with a view of the entire development. The family plans to show two exhibitions per year and has ambitions to collaborate with contemporary artists for site-specific works.

The villas on the grounds aren't for sale but will be available for short-term rentals and retreats. Lu Xun said he is negotiating with a hotel-management company to manage the properties.

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The museum is part of a development that also includes this residential villa, called Fo-Shou, by Mansilla + Tuñón.
Qilai Shen for The Wall Street Journal

The family hopes the entire complex will generate 20 million yuan a year and be able to sustain itself by the fourth year of operation.

So far, China's track record for private museums has been mixed. Several smaller ones have already shuttered due to poor finances while others opened to fanfare only to fizzle with few exhibitions. Some have been infiltrated by forgeries. The Jibaozhai Museum in Jizhou was shut in July because its collection of around 40,000 purported antiques were determined by authorities to be mostly fakes. The Long Museum's Mr. Liu put "Eagle Standing on Pine" by Qi Baishi up for auction in 2011 where it sold for a record price of $65.5 million at the time. But after rumors surfaced that it was a fake, the bidder never came forward to claim the painting. A museum spokeswoman denies the work is a forgery.

The new private museums are primarily focused on contemporary art, which isn't as susceptible to forgery. "When the artist is alive, it's not as much of a problem," said a representative at the Budi Tek's Yuz Foundation. Sifang's younger Mr. Lu said fakes aren't a great concern as he often speaks directly with the artist who makes the works for his collection.

Many art-museum projects, including the Sifang gallery in Nanjing, are founded by property developers. That has caused some in art circles to question owners' commitment to art. They argue that developers use the museums mainly to get sweeter land deals from the government. "There are always rumors that it is ultimately a real-estate play, or that there is some deal going on," said Meg Maggio, who owns a gallery in Beijing and Hong Kong.

The challenge is for the museums to sustain themselves once they've been constructed, Ms. Maggio said. "Can they all thrive? Can they find money, keep a stable management team and build a serious program?" she said. "Some are run well. Many aren't. It's still very early stages in China."

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Lu Xun, son of Lu Jun
Thomas Di Fonzo/The Wall Street Journal

In Nanjing, Lu Xun says his family hopes to use hotel and conference-center profits to cover the museum's budget. The project's next phase is a luxury residential development just steps away from the museum.

"Without money from the property development, how do you support the art? It's unfair to judge us that way," Mr. Lu said. "We're not flipping art."

Related

U.K. art consultant Philip Dodd, who has organized private-museum forums in recent years to gather China's budding patrons, says art museums have long been tied to the large egos and profits of businessmen, pointing to Andrew Mellon, the U.S. financier who died in 1937 and whose art collection was donated to establish the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

"I wouldn't over-moralize this," Mr. Dodd says. "Museums are often set up with sugar money."

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